. nothing to stop the epidemic of senseless gun violence that plague not only our major cities like new york and chicago, but countless small towns throughout our nation, towns with names like newtown, aurora, tucson, dekalb, blacksburg and littleton. in the years i have been a member of this body, this house has not held a single hearing, not one to address gun violence. while over 30,000 americans die each year from gun violence, over 400 lives have been lost by gun violence in my hometown of chicago, people are dying every day. . we in this body are afraid to talk about it. the time has come for us to stop listening to the gun lobby and start listening to the american people. the fact is the majority of americans gun owning and not, desire commonsense, reasonable gun regulation. congress must no longer stand in the way of reasonable legislation, instead we must champion it. the american people want to see background checks required on all firearm purchases instead of the fractions of sales that get done today. 408% of u.s. gun sales are by private sellers who are not required to perform b
